Hoe do I get PowerPoint 2007 to use my 2003 custom template? some chart formatting is lost

I have a ppt user that just upgraded to Vista/Office 2007 from 2000/Office 2003.
He has a ppt that serves as a sample/guide for others to use so we all use same format.

The idea is that we open his 2003 ppt file and take out the sample info and put in our info. In this ppt he has a custom chart template. What he has customized is either a bar or stock chart that displays data points as small colored blocks on the bar itself. The colored blocks represent specific data points. In order to keep the blocks visually separated, he has a color sequence for the blocks that gets repeated as data is added to the table.

The problem is that when we open this ppt with powerpoint 2007, the chart template seems to forget that color sequence to the data blocks. The sample data that is already in the table displays with the correct sequence, but as soon as you add new data points the color for the points is all the same color.

I have attempted to use the help in Powerpoint o find an answer for this but was unable to locate any info that helped. Any advice or a link to a good online reference would be helpful. I am not sure if this is a figuring out how it works in 2007 or a geniune this does not work same way in 07 as previous version issue.

In addition to the information Glenna posted, if you're going to go back and forth between 2007 and 2003, then you may want to restrict the 2007 users to using MSGraph (which is what PPT 2003 uses for charting) instead of Excel (which is what PPT 2007 uses).

Color schemes in 2007 are different than those in 2003, although the concept is the same, and so the colors don't translate correctly in charts when opened in the 2003 version, as you've found.

Your 2007 user can use Insert | Object and choose MSGraph Chart to insert a 2003-style chart that should retain colors. Or you can change this in the registry -- see instructions here:

If you don't do this registry restriction on your 2007 users, caution them not to convert the charts when prompted when they double-click to edit the chart in 2007. They'll want to use "edit existing" instead.

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EisnaugleAuthor Commented: 2008-10-17

Thank you. I am going to follow Glenna's solution and suggest the user create the new theme. I do greatly appreciate (and may use for myself) the solution posted by Echo, but I know that I will not be able to get everyone else to go through those steps. Our company also does not allow most users to have admin rights which they would need in order to edit the registry.
Thank you both for your answers!